Sunday, August 27, 2006

A couple weeks ago, Google decided to yank the Groups link from its search pages and hide it under a new "more »" link. This pissed off a fewpeople (including me), but given that this was a change to core search UI of Google, I'm surprised the reaction wasn't stronger. Maybe the extra mouse click just isn't a big deal for most people.

For the rest of us, however, this was begging for a fix. My searching revealed a Chickenfoot script here that looked promising. Unfortunately, I found that Chickenfoot isn't quite ready for primetime. When I set the script to run on *.google.com/*, then went to mail.google.com, Chickenfoot caused Firefox to freeze and consume 99% CPU.

At that point I knew I knew it was time to break out good ol' Greasemonkey. A couple hours of hacking, and the problem was solved. The script is easily customizable, and by default also restores the Froogle and Books links. Let me know if you have any suggestions or feedback.

Update: Google changed a few things that broke the script. I should have an update this weekend that fixes it and makes it more resistant to being broken by minor changes.

Update 2.0: Made a few tweaks and got everything working again. As per David's request, the script also has two new functions. hideGoogleSearchLink moves a link off the main page and into the 'more »' popup. removeGoogleSearchLink gets rid of a link altogether. Enjoy...